Hi Brad,
First of all, I would advocate modulo, not quotient.
Then at least it also works correctly for negative integers.
Secondly, I see the code out of context, but variable names like "weight"
and "volume"
to me suggest that they may be arbitrary (non-negative) real numbers.
And then modulo doesn't work.
So for posterity, if you know a and b are integers:
replace (floor (/ a b)) with (modulo a b)
replace (truncate (/ a b)) with (quotient a b)
2013/6/10 Bradley Lucier <lucier at math.purdue.edu>
> Re:
>>> FWIW, I would have at least written:
>>>> ((qty (in-range 0 (add1 (min (floor (/ weight-left weight))
>> (floor (/ volume-left volume)))))))
>>>> I have now seen the
>> (floor (/ a b))
>> idiom a number of times, and wonder why people prefer it to
>> (quotient a b)
>> Normally, to calculate (/ a b) where a and b are exact integers requires
> one to calculate (gcd a b) to put the fraction into lowest terms
> p/q=(quotient a (gcd a b))/(quotient b (gcd a b)); then, to calculate
> (floor p/q), one must calculate (quotient p q).
>> For large integers of size $N$ bits, (gcd a b) takes $O(N\log^2(N))$
> fixnum operations, where quotient takes $O(N\log N)$ operations. This
> assumes Fourier-based methods for bignum multiplication; for more direct
> methods, the difference in operation count is larger.
>> In any case, the (floor (/ ...)) idiom takes noticeably more time than
> (quotient ...). If one knows that a and b are positive integers, they give
> the same results.
>> This is an argument not to use (floor (/ ...)). Are there arguments in
> favor of this idiom?
>> Brad
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